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Sunday, May 24, 2015

I've been meditating regularly for over a year now, and it has made a huge difference in my life. But there are many different kundalini meditations out there, and they all are for different purposes.

A few days ago I was prompted to take up the meditation to release anger and negativity--a meditation I think I had done only a handful of times before in my life, and only because it was specifically assigned by my teacher. This week I did it for several consecutive days and was astonished at the difference in my life.

Here is a video on how to do it. Before you do the meditation, you must tune in, and after you complete your meditations, you must tune out. All told, this doesn't need to take more than five minutes of your time.

Side note: this is my teacher. Isn't she beautiful?!! Sending her grateful love vibes!! She is amazing!

I hadn't done this meditation more than a few times in the past because I really hadn't been dealing with any anger or negativity issues. One part of the meditation is that you're supposed to intentionally think of the things that upset you as you do it, and it just clears them. I'd gone a long time without having much to be upset about.

This past week, this meditation has been a lifesaver! Fortunately I was prompted to start doing it preemptively, such that when the storm of negativity hit, I was able to just breathe it out and move on. It's actually been pretty astonishing.

One of my issues lately has been that every time I think I'm "over" this one situation, I find another instance of what I consider vandalism and it just sets me off and I get angry all over again. This has been going on for maybe two months. I forgive, and then the next day I discover yet another horrific thing that's been done. But just yesterday, three days into doing this meditation daily, I discovered yet another destroyed thing in my house, and where I would normally have had smoke coming out the ears, I was able to shrug it off and just accept it. Am I thrilled about it? Hardly. But I'm not boiling with rage, which is a huge thing! I was actually able to continue functioning like a normal, happy person throughout the rest of the day. And this morning I still feel fine. So: success!

Conclusion
If you're dealing with anger and negativity in your life, you have to try this meditation!! Go ahead and commit to three minutes a day every day for a week and see if you notice a difference. For me, I noticed a difference immediately after my first time doing the meditation. And as a sleep-deprived, fatigued pregnant person, I actually haven't even been able to make it to a full three minutes a day--I think I'm probably closer to one and a half minutes, frankly. But every little bit counts.

Friday, May 22, 2015

Earlier in the year I felt strongly that I needed to commit to adding Sodarshan Chakra Kriya to my daily kundalini meditation sadhana. I wrote about it a little bit here. Sodarshan Chakra Kriya is amazing because it deeply cleanses the subconscious mind--gets the garbage to the surface for processing. In a previous post I quote Yogi Bhajan about it, and I'm going to do it again:

There is no time, no place, no space and no condition attached to this mantra. Each garbage pit has its own time to clear. If you are going to clean your own garbage, you must estimate and clean it as fast as you can, or as slow as you want. You have to decide how much time you have to clean up your garbage pit.

About five days into my daily Sodarshan work, my life completely fell apart. A well-meant but completely, 180-degree misinterpreted conversation led to weeks of the silent treatment from a beloved friend and ended up making life pretty miserable for a while.

Then, a few weeks into that misadventure, my husband asked if he could join me in meditation. I taught him Sodarshan Chakra Kriya with the stern warning that when they say it cleans your subconscious garbage really fast, they actually mean it. By "they" I mean the yogis. The yogis mean their business.

So my DH meditated with me for just three minutes a day, for just two days, and then his life fell apart too! I don't think he made the connection or would ever believe it exists, but I did warn him. Sodarshan Chakra Kriya cleans things up fast. It brings our internal garbage to the fore and then we have to deal with it. By hook or by crook, it must be processed.

I went to my meditation teacher to figure out how this all works, and it turns out: one kriya changes the world. Because meditation alters the landscape of the subconscious mind, and because all other subconscious minds are aware of each other, changing your subconscious triggers changes in those around you.

On a physical, observable level, consider the overweight girl who begins losing weight. As she gets slimmer and slimmer, her fellow overweight friends tell her it's not healthy to "lose weight so quickly," try to talk her out of what she's doing, etc. Her positive changes are triggering her friends' insecurities.

Similarly, on the subconscious plane, the same thing can happen. As your own internal workings alter, the people you interact with respond in ways their subconscious minds feel are appropriate. They will often not understand why they are acting the way they do, or why they feel the way they feel. But when one person changes on any plane, the people they interact with respond accordingly.

Responses: it's not about you, it's about me
The important thing to remember about other people is that their responses are never about you. Their responses are always about them. We all filter reality through our own filters. The things that you actually say may not be what other people hear. Because people hear what they choose to hear, just like they see what they choose to see.

When spiritual progress upsetsothers, it is sometimes a sign that theirsubconscious knows it should bechanging too. Image here.

This is why seeing someone slim down can trigger an overweight person's insecurities, to go back to the example above. In reality, the friend's reaction has nothing to do with our heroine's weight loss or weight gain or her weight at all. The reality is that this friend has a bunch of body-related insecurities, and they are essentially waiting to be triggered at any opportunity. Watching the heroine slim down just happens to be the most convenient opportunity for these triggers to come out to be dealt with. These feelings coming up are actually a blessing because someone who is awake can notice these feelings and recognize them for what they are, and do the spiritual work to overcome the feelings of resentment and frustration with the self.

When you start changing your life, be it through exercise or healthy eating or meditation or extra scripture reading and temple attendance--as you change who you are on the inside--other people will not always react well. And that's okay. It is all according to eternal principles that we attract what we are. When what we are changes, the things in our life change too. The people in our lives change. Sometimes they change who they are, and sometimes their change is to remove themselves from your life entirely.

This post has been in my drafts for a long time. After my first time being burned with Sodarshan Chakra Kriya back in March, I kind of gave up on it for a while. This past week, on Sunday, I believe, I took it back up again, just for 2-3 minutes a day.

Sure enough, up came the stick episode I blogged about yesterday. Precipitated by the same people involved in the first time I started doing this meditation in earnest. To me it is an additional witness that indeed, when you start making internal changes, others respond--whether or not they are even there in person, whether or not you have contact at all. This is why there are so many reports from those who do the addiction meditation that they doing the addiction meditation actually seems to influence other family members with addictions as well. One kriya changes the world.Changing your world
Got some changes you need to make? There's probably a kriya for that! Here is a list of kriyas publicly available on 3HO. Here is a list of meditations. The term "kriya" refers to a complete set--anything that when you do it in its entirety, is complete. So some meditations count as kriyas and some yoga sets count as kriyas. Sodarshan Chakra Kriya is obviously a meditation considered to be a kriya.

Go check out the meditation page I linked if you like--find a meditation that applies to your life and try it out. Sodarshan Chakra Kriya is a very fast-working meditation specifically for clearing subconscious garbage, but Kirtan Kriya is much gentler. If you're dealing with a specific thing you want to clear, you could try some meditations for healing the broken heart, releasing inner anger and negativity, physical or emotional healing, alleviating stress, etc. There's a kriya for just about everything, and let me tell you: they work. But at the same time, just sticking with one kriya over time will clear a wide, wide variety of issues.

It's best to pick one kriya to work on and do it every day for at least 40 days before dropping it. You can do multiple kriyas a day and switch them out, but it's best to keep one that you do every day over and over. You will see a difference in your life as you add this practice to your daily scripture study and regular temple worship.

Please note: sometimes the initial difference is things getting worse, not better--it's due to things getting shaken up and moved around and the subconscious mind adjusting. For example, it's really common for people who start meditating regularly to start feeling randomly angry all the time for a week or two. Just keep meditating and the anger or other unwanted emotion will clear.

Conclusion

Altering the landscape of your subconscious mind triggers responses in the subconscious minds of others--and those people will react, whether their reactions make sense outwardly or not. The scriptures teach that now is the time to take care of our spiritual development--and that means clearing up not just conscious issues but the subconscious issues that underlie our dysfunctional ways of thinking and acting.

Alma 34:3232 For behold, this life is the time for men to prepare to meet God; yea, behold the day of this life is the day for men to perform their labors.

Thursday, May 21, 2015

Last night a friend publicly attacked me on the Internet. It was kind of a surreal experience. But fortunately, God prepared me for it and had already instructed me to preemptively do some mediations for releasing negativity, so when it all hit I was able to release it pretty quick.

Still, in the night I sat there tossing and turning. All the things I wanted to say to this person were floating through my head. I told God, I don't even want to think these things. I want to be over it.

And in that moment, I had a sort of energetic vision of a bunch of sticks--me with a bunch of sticks.

At first I shrugged it off, because I've been doing yard work like a fiend and spending hours and hours chopping down old bushes and putting the branches away. But then I thought, no, that was something I really saw. And so I asked God what it was. What were all those sticks, anyway?

The answer I got: they were sticks as in, "sticks and stones will break my bones, but words will never hurt me."

I told God, I don't want these. I asked for help giving them to Jesus so I wouldn't have to hold onto them anymore. There are lots of things I could do and say about this situation that would be completely justified and warranted, but I'm over it. There are a lot of things I wish this person would understand, but at the end of the day, I really feel this person is at the end of their rope in a lot of ways, and while she obviously deeply hates me, I don't hate her and I don't want her to be hurt. So even though there are a lot of things I'd like to say, I'd also like to just not say them.

So I started turning over my sticks to the Lord. There are bundles of them. I'd think I was done and then as I tried to sleep another protestation would come up, and I'd have to pause and envision myself handing that stick over to God too.

The one redeeming thing: I have had no stones for this chick. I'm now stick-free. I asked God to turn any future sticks I might have for this lady into flowers. We'll see how it works out.

In other news, we are two days into a Mercury retrograde (surprise!). This is exactly the type of thing you should expect to happen. I do wonder if things will get worse before they get better. Retrograde finishes on June 11. But anyway, at least on my end, at least this morning, I am stick-free.

Monday, May 18, 2015

3 And they did also carry with them deseret, which, by interpretation, is a honey bee; and thus they did carry with them swarms of bees, and all manner of that which was upon the face of the land, seeds of every kind.

Well, life throws surprises at you sometimes.

Bees. Everywhere. This picture does not do them justice.

On Thursday afternoon, I went over to my mom's house. At 3:30 pm, when I got there, everything was normal.

When my BFF left to go home at 4, I walked her to the front door, opened it up, and just stopped.

The whole yard was buzzing with bees.

We just stood there for a moment, shocked. I was personally wondering if this was for real. But it totally was for real. There were thousands of honeybees all over my mom's front yard. It was like that scene from Jupiter Ascending or something.

So we went through the back door and walked around the whole house to get my friend back to her car, and I took a picture of the madness. All the little dots are bees:

It's hard to see, but to the left of the white flower
is where they are. They kind of look like a
pineapple. All the bees are on top of each other.

Then I went inside and waited. By 5 pm they were settled into a spot near the rhododendron bush:

And in the meantime, I was just busy researching what they were doing there and how long they would be there.

My research indicated that the bees were swarming--trying to find a new home. Often they only hang out where they are for a few hours, so they would probably leave soon. I thought to myself: I hope they leave soon!

All that night, I dreamed about trapping and killing skunks with my cousin. This actually matters to the story.

The next morning, I woke up after all my skunk-killing dreams, and had a text from my mom: the bees were still there. I sent out an email to the local beekeeping association asking what they thought I should do, and then it hit me: maybe these bees were meant for me. At this point, it was about 8:30 am. I decided that if these bees were for me, as sort of a divine gift, then I would easily find a beehive for a reasonable price before noon, and I would be able to easily harvest the swarm without injury. Seemed like a reasonable conclusion to me!

My dream beehive from Aunt Bea's Bees. I almost bought one
at last year's fair but I stopped myself, thinking: who do I think
I am, a beekeeper! But I guess it was just not the right time.

I shot off an email to some beehive makers I met at the Waterford Fair, which, PS, is fantastic. In a miraculous turn of events, the guy there wrote me back almost instantly, stating that he miraculously had the exact beehive I wanted left over from the last craft thing they went to, and he would sell it to me at a discount. And he had the gear I would need, too.

So I got the kids in the car and we dashed off to meet him--the guy who runs Aunt Bea's Bees. We made it to the town in record time. We spent about twenty minutes there acquiring the beehive and the equipment. In another random and miraculous turn of events, it had turned out that earlier on Thursday morning, I had gone to the bank to deposit a few checks. The kind yet completely clueless or deaf worker at the bank did not deposit my checks, and instead handed me an envelope of cash and I decided to just roll with it. However, when it came time for me to pay for the equipment, it was exactly the amount I had originally had ready in my envelope.

Before we left our friend from Aunt Bea's Bees, he warned me about skunks eating the bees. I told him, you'll never believe it, but I literally dreamed all night about killing skunks--and just two weeks ago or so, a friend seriously gave me her skunk trap. I have never even seen a real live skunk except maybe at the zoo. I took it as another sign that I was on the right track. Even my subconscious mind has been preparing for the task of protecting honeybees! Even from threats I didn't even know were threats; threats I have never seen.

We rushed home and at first I was stressed about it, because I knew sometimes swarms only last a few hours before they move on in search of their new home. But I had this Holy Ghost moment that reminded me that the bees were mine and if I really believed that, I could calm down a little bit because they would certainly be waiting for me. They were my present.

So I said a prayer of gratitude as I made it home even faster than I made it to the neighboring state in the first place. My BFF met me at my mom's house and graciously watched the kiddos while I suited up and got to work (so for the record, that dear dear friend of mine gets half the credit for all of this!! Couldn't have done it without her!!).

Getting the swarm into the hive was tricky and took me many tries. At first I tried to brush the bees in with a bee brush, but after the first time I did that, they caught onto my tricks and just started flying back to the branch they were on. It didn't take me long to realize I was going to need to cut the branch of the bush they were on and put it in the hive.

Pregnant me and my new beehive! Once again, the random dots around are bees.

Except the branch was an inch around and our loppers were not very good, and I am very pregnant and not as strong as I wish I were. There were so many bees on the branch I had to keep brushing them away from the area I needed to cut, and then I just had to strain to make a dent in this silly branch.

Then I was reminded: these were my bees! I just needed to ask for help. So I said another prayer and said, God, if these are really my bees that You sent me, then You know I will need Your help to cut this branch because I am just not strong enough to do it alone.

And then on the next try I was able to cut through the thick branch, and handled it right into the beehive.

I had also placed a tissue with one drop of lemon oil and one drop of citrus bliss oil (both from doTerra) in there because I had read that the queens smell kind of like lemons so bees are attracted by that scent.

Anyway, it totally worked, and I put the lid on the hive one glorious piece at a time, and was thrilled to see that now bees were voluntarily entering the hive through the one entrance I left open, instead of trying to leave it. There was a final batch of bees about the size of a child's head left on the bush, and I decided to give them an hour before I plugged the hive up all the way. The hour came and went, and when I went back outside, there were only a few bees on the branch and most of them were in the hive.

So I plugged up the one entrance and moved the hive down to the side of the house to sit in the shade while the bees got used to their new home.

Beehive from behind, on its cinderblock towers.

On Saturday morning I went with my dad to Home Depot and got a few cinderblocks. We built two cinderblock towers for the beehive to go on in the back of the house, and once the beehive was settled there, I mixed them up some sugar water and set it near. Then, as we neared the 24-hour mark from when I first caught the bees, I unplugged the hole. No bees came in or out for a while. After a time, my dad and I wondered if the bees were even in there, since we looked through the observation panel and only saw like five bees. I lifted up a roof panel in the back of the hive, and yep, there were like 5000 bees. So I had to quickly put the panel back!

That afternoon, we weathered a severe thunderstorm, and I thought how grateful I was that the bees were safe in their new home. Actually, this whole time I have been about bursting with gratitude. But I was really grateful then! Notably, though, the bees that stayed out by the rhododendron bush through the storm were still there this morning, and my mom said that their little bodies seemed to almost repel the water. So that is interesting.

Hive from above.

On Sunday morning, the hive was quiet, apparently, but when my parents started poking the hive to see if anything was in there, some guard bees came out and got stuck in my mom's hair. The bees were indeed there! By afternoon, when I went to check on them after church, they were very busy. Bees all over the place, coming in and out of the hive. Lots of guard bees. It was pretty cool.

So I'm pretty sure my bees are here to stay, and I am thrilled. I have been so grateful and so happy. What an awesome present.

This year had been kind of a difficult one for me so far, but lately things have just been getting progressively more and more awesome. It's like God is saying, thanks for putting up with all that yucky stuff, here are a bunch of presents for you for dealing with the insanity. Suffice it so say: everything is awesome, and God knows each of us and loves us all, and He has all sorts of presents in store for us.

Sometimes the presents He sends are not obvious. Sometimes they come with stingers! And sometimes to collect the presents, you have to put on your bee suit, say your prayers, and get to work. I wouldn't have gotten these bees if I hadn't been willing to drive across the state, and then personally be the one--while entering the third trimester of pregnancy!--to collect them and move the hive. But all the work was worth it and I am so happy and grateful for my thoughtful present. Wahe Guru!

Is that an aura around my beehive? ;o)

Oh, also: a bee did actually get stuck in my hood while I was collecting the swarm. I think it got in there when the elastic around my "waist" got moved around by my pregnant belly. But, when I felt that these bees were my present, I knew that I would not be harmed harvesting them--that safety was another part of the gift. I was not stung. I was able to get the hood off safely and the bee left without leaving me her own present. Actually, I have left this whole experience feeling very strongly that at least my personal honeybees are very friendly little creatures.

In bee-related scriptures, both the Jaredites and the Nephites brought bees with them to the promised land. Very cool. Definitely feeling the love right now. Thanks, Heavenly Father! That was the best present!!

Being offended is the "in" thing to do these days. The news seems like a straight up victim parade sometimes--it's all about who offended who and who is offended the most.

I recently lost a friend over feelings of being offended. Not my feelings. Hers. The backstory is, my family is very into research, and we read news and studies all day, and that's what we talk about. In my family, no one gets offended. We talk about what we read. Well, any time I mentioned a study or news piece on certain topics, this lady took it as a personal offense, regardless of the actual reality, which is that I just happened to find that stuff interesting.

She would also be upset if we were talking about certain topics and I brought up a study--rather than actually looking up the study to see if the study were valid or anything, she would just get secretly upset and harbor these inner feelings of being offended. In the meantime, it would literally never even occur to me to be upset about someone's scientific (or "scientific") assertions because I feel like that's why Google exists: to look stuff up and evaluate it. If your asserts something scientific in nature, the answer is not to get offended: the answer is to look it up. I am always grateful to those who point me in the directions of the research I need to do to make sure my life is as awesome as it can be.

So anyway, I'm down a good friend, and it's all because of being easily offended. When I say God knows I never meant to offend her, I mean it so literally: you can seriously pray about it and learn that I really never meant to hurt her in any way. But the problem is that being offended is not something that happens to you: it is a choice. And if someone chooses to make that choice, then there's not always a lot that a well-intentioned person can do about it.

When we believe or say we have been offended, we usually mean we feel insulted, mistreated, snubbed, or disrespected. And certainly clumsy, embarrassing, unprincipled, and mean-spirited things do occur in our interactions with other people that would allow us to take offense. However, it ultimately is impossible for another person to offend you or to offend me. Indeed, believing that another person offended us is fundamentally false. To be offended is a choice we make; it is not a condition inflicted or imposed upon us by someone or something else.

[...]

One of the greatest indicators of our own spiritual maturity is revealed in how we respond to the weaknesses, the inexperience, and the potentially offensive actions of others. A thing, an event, or an expression may be offensive, but you and I can choose not to be offended—and to say with Pahoran, “it mattereth not.”

The whole talk is phenomenal and I recommend it.

When being offended doesn't feel like a choice
Sometimes it doesn't feel like a choice to be offended or not. Just like with all emotions, sometimes things come up in our lives that trigger the feelings of offense and it feels like we had nothing to do with it.

The reality is otherwise.

At the top of this post is a picture with the words, "The feeling of 'being offended' is a warning indicator that is showing you where to look within yourself for unresolved issues." This is so, so true.

When you are confident in a thing, it's impossible to be offended over affronts to it. When you are secure in yourself, perceived insults just roll right off. They don't stick and they don't hurt.

Being offended and taking things personally is a symptom of being fundamentally insecure with one or more areas of yourself: be it your choices, your beliefs, your actions. This is why it is so important to live congruently (walking the talk) and to be confident in your decisions. For me, being confident in my decisions means that the majority of my decisions are deeply researched--and it also means that my decisions are open to reversal if I find more convincing evidence to do things a different way.

If being offended feels like a natural thing to you, and not like a choice, I invite you to take an introspective look at why.

Ask yourself,

What part of me is so insecure that it is driving me to be offended?

Why am I insecure about these things?

Are these things I can or should change?

Is there a better thing I should be doing, a better way I should be thinking, about these issues?

What can I do to make myself more secure such that I will stop feeling offended at this?

Framing the issues in this light can bring clarity. Being offended is a fundamental sign of insecurity and spiritual immaturity. What changes need to be made in the heart in order to overcome current feelings of being offended and to prevent future offenses from being taken to heart?

Offended by the truth
Earlier I wrote about the Victim Parade that is the news these days. Everything is all about being offended and who is victimizing who. And very often, the true offender to all the victimized is Truth.

As an example, the pro-gay marriage crowd that is perpetually offended at the assertion that man-woman marriage is different and special and important.

The atheists perpetually offended at mentions of God.

The feminists perpetually offended at the concept of biologically-ordained gender roles.

The reason these people are offended is, at least as far as I can tell, because something is true and they don't like that.

For me, shortly before my spiritual awakening, if you will, I came across some Church doctrine that really rubbed me the wrong way. It would not be an exaggeration to say I was offended by it. It deeply, deeply upset and hurt me. Or rather: I allowed myself to be deeply upset and hurt over it.

But I did my research and prayed a lot, went to the temple over my concerns, and left feeling super humbled. The reason I was so upset was because the doctrine is true and because I was not living it. That is the honest truth of why I was offended. We get offended by truth when we know in our hearts that it is true and that we are not conforming to it.

It may not always feel that way; in the moment, it can just feel like self-righteous anger and resentment. But if you take a step back and ask, what is the kernel of truth here that my soul feels allergic to?, that can make all the difference.

I can't say for sure, but I do wonder if in reality, all offense is really just the soul's allergic reaction to truth. The symptom of personal changes that need to be made on a spiritual level for our progression.

Conclusion
We all have a choice in whether or not we will be offended. The modern day apostles of Jesus Christ have taught that being offended or not is a sort of barometer of spiritual maturity. There are ways we can empower ourselves in the battle against being personally offended: we must be mindful as to why we are offended, and what in ourselves needs to change in order to overcome the feelings of being offended.